Somewhere in Athens, people are forgetting who they are. Christos Nikou's debut feature treats a citywide epidemic of amnesia not as a thriller premise but as a quiet, deadpan question: if you lost every memory, who would you choose to become?
What is Apples about?
Aris is a man in his late thirties, living alone, who one day steps off a bus with no idea where he was going or who he is. He is one of many. An unexplained wave of sudden memory loss is spreading through the city, and hospitals have set up a programme for patients nobody comes to claim. Enrolled in an experimental recovery scheme, Aris receives a cassette player and a series of recorded instructions: ride a bicycle, attend a costume party, go to the cinema, take a photograph of each task as proof. The idea is to build a new identity from scratch, one assignment at a time. Along the way he meets a woman on the same programme, and their tentative companionship raises the possibility that a blank slate can be a gift as much as a loss. Nikou's film keeps its tone dry and gently comic, and it withholds easy explanations, leaving the viewer to wonder what Aris might be avoiding by not remembering.
About the cast
Aris Servetalis carries almost every scene with a stillness that makes the smallest reaction register, and Sofia Georgovassili plays the fellow patient whose arrival shifts the film's rhythm. Anna Kalaitzidou, Argyris Bakirtzis, Kostas Laskos, Costas Xikominos and Alexandra Aidini complete the supporting cast, most of them appearing as doctors, strangers and passers-by in a city that has become oddly polite about forgetting.
Context & significance
Released in 2020 as a Greek-Polish co-production, this ninety-one-minute film marked the directorial debut of Christos Nikou, who had earlier worked as an assistant on Greek productions before stepping behind the camera himself. The film belongs to a strand of recent Greek cinema known for flat delivery, absurd premises played entirely straight and a formal precision that invites viewers to laugh and feel uneasy at the same moment. It is deliberately low-tech: cassette tapes and instant cameras stand in for smartphones, and the absence of digital devices leaves the characters, and the audience, with no shortcut to the past. The fruit of the title runs through the story as a recurring motif, both a diet for the amnesiac and a small joke about what memory is supposed to be good for. It found an appreciative audience among viewers who enjoy slow, wry, humane drama, and it was widely written about as one of the more distinctive first films of its year.
Watching Apples on Ktime
K-Time carries this film with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so you can hear the original Greek with Farsi text or switch to the dubbed track. Watching requires a free K-Time account login; the Farsi interface and this page are open to everyone.